


Mutually Exclusive

by fourfreedoms



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate and Brad are politicians under Salisbury's government.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutually Exclusive

*The Cockburn Commision was actually under Disraeli’s government some twenty years earlier, but I don’t know enough about the specifics of British Victorian politics, so I just used that.

 

They don’t have much time alone. Just the few bare hours they can scrape together in Nate’s rented room in Cheapside, and then Nate has to return to his wife and young son and pretend he doesn’t know Brad beyond mutual invitations to the club and run-ins at the theater. Brad lives with this, because there’s no other way to be. He sometimes thinks that Nate would love to live like Edward Carpenter, throw all this aside, set up right next door to him in Millthorpe. They both know such a scheme would only render themselves politically impotent. Nate is Gladstone’s man and perhaps one day he will run for Prime Minister. They can’t pitch it all away. Not after the hell Brad went through to get elected as an MP as a mere ward of the Colberts and not their actual son.

But whatever Nate’s thoughts, he is also endlessly practical, and he never says he will leave his wife--throw their carefully constructed lie into the Thames like so much trash. It’s just a look he gets in his eyes. He turns his head to face Brad, and Brad simply knows what’s running through his head.

But now he is not thinking of any of that. He sweeps a hand through his hair and levels a hard look at him. “Bradley, why are you still dressed?”

Nate pulls a chair out from the rickety old desk and sits upon it, legs crossed, determined to wait. He’s dispensed with his weskit and pocket watch. The fine linen of his shirt is from a better tailor than Brad ever bothers with, but it's carelessly torn at the neck.

His eyes say he's going to make Brad strip before him and then he’s going to run his mouth down every plane of Brad’s skin.

Brad quirks a grin. He can't help resisting a little. “What think you of the Cockburn Commission’s findings?” He unbuttons his collar and sets aside his coat.

“That parliament should decriminalize trade unions?” Nate says, leaning his chin on his fist and taking in Brad’s movements. His cheeks are flushed even though the room is drafty at best.

“Does it not rankle that Salisbury’s government will introduce this reform and we will yet again be made to look like fools?” Brad unbuttons his smalls and pulls his shirt tails free. He looks at Nate beneath his lashes like a coquette.

Nate sighs, eyes following Brad's hands. “Just so, but it takes a meaner man than I not to admit that we desperately need it.”

Brad shakes his head, pulling his shirt off and tossing it at Nate. “You astonish me.”

“Oh?” Nate raises his eyes back up to Brad’s face. “That I can talk of politics before your nakedness? You brought the subject up, friend, but I might add that it has been several days since I have been able to converse with one who shares so many of my opinions.” He grins and re-crosses his legs. “You should join me for brandy at the club, and then I could empty my mind of everything but you.”

Brad kicks off his boots. “Dangerous,” he says, taking a moment with his soft trousers. He enjoys the way Nate sinks his teeth into his lower lip. “You stare at me, my lord.” Nate has always been able to find his gaze, to meet it, to convey perhaps more than words, and it has always been a distraction. Nate, bloody obstinate, knows it.

But now he gets to his feet. “Do not ‘my lord’ me, Brad, not here,” he says, closing the last few feet of space between them. Brad hides a smile and accepts his kiss. With Nate’s hand at the back of his head, his mouth brushing across Brad’s, and the feeling that wells up in Brad every time they do this, even Brad occasionally entertains thoughts of moving to Millthorpe.

Nate’s teeth scrape over his lower lip and his fingers drag down Brad’s spine. A moan jerks out of him, unbidden. Before he knew Nate and his arresting laugh and bright eyes, there was only the thrill of change, and the power behind it. Now, occasionally, something in him aches, wishes he could’ve met Nate at a card party or a trifling tea dance. The two things he loves most are mutually exclusive and he cannot find the strength in himself to give up either.

Nate has this strength. And it scares him.


End file.
